Reflective Encounters

“So often in film is the immigrant experience reduced to a simple binary, with stories either being a celebration of the hard work that enabled immigrants to prosper abroad, or ones that tread closer to reality and show the unrelenting hardship many face. In just two minutes, Missing Migrants (2020) broadens this perspective, turning the focus to the families immigrants leave behind, and the profound feelings of absence and uncertainty they develop. The film resembles more of an infographic, with a narrator consistently dropping informative facts and statistics regarding immigration.

Yet, there is a recurring visual metaphor that remains emotionally potent throughout: the absence of a family member is literally depicted as a missing puzzle piece in the bodies of those left behind, with families crumbling and losing pieces as they lose hope for proper contact. The film shows that no party is at fault, displaying several reasons for this lack of contact, including the precarious immigration statuses that prevent migrants from obtaining official support in tracking down their families. The migrants themselves are depicted as puzzle pieces, swapped through cold bureaucratic hands in foreign countries. As the film closes it hits upon a particularly sobering notion, that the crushing sense of absence families develop may become permanent, as many do not even know if their loved ones survived the immigration process.”

— Matthew Chan